"Heartstrings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over, and that they would be thankful, take the medicine, get well, and then say, "Boys, these Yankees are pretty good fellows after all. Let's quit fighting, and call it quits." But I was not running the war, and had got to obey orders, if I broke heartstrings and corset strings. I would have given anything to have got out of the job. The idea of arresting a woman and searching her, and seeing her cry, and have her think me a hard-hearted wretch, was revolting, and I found myself wishing she would take ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... conscious of an actual physical drag at her heartstrings. The pulsating glow of her young loveliness had never been more moving and oh! the sublime certainty of her unconsciousness that Life lay between this hour and that day when she was "quite old and not pretty ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not, The love that she longed for and waited unwitting; She moved not, I breathed not—till lo, a horn winded, And she started, and o'er her came trouble and wonder, Came pallor and trembling; came a strain at my heartstrings As bodiless there I stretched hands toward her beauty, And voiceless cried out, as the cold mist swept o'er me. Then again clash of arms, and the morning watch calling, And the long leaves and great twisted trunks ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... lead her, in all its beauty. After such discourses Arsinoe would be softened and felt inclined to believe in God and to love Christ, but no sooner had her protectress called her again into the school-room and put the very same things before her in her own way than the girl's heartstrings drew close again; and when she was desired to pray she raised her hands, indeed, but out of sheer defiance, she prayed in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the shadow. He had never been of an envious disposition; he had always looked upon envy as a mean vice, unworthy of a gentleman; but for a moment something very like envy pulled at his heartstrings. Graciella worshipped the golden calf. He worshipped Graciella. But he had no money; he could not have taken her to the ball in a closed carriage, drawn by blooded horses and driven by a darky ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... uptown and out of town and anywhere, and told the story of my congregation on the Bowery. The result was not by any means a solution of my problem, nor of the tramp problem, but carloads of old clothes, and money to pay for lodgings. There was such a terrific tug at my heartstrings all the time that I never had two coats to my own back, or a change of clothing in hardly any department. As for money, I was, as they were, most of the time penniless! Everything I could beg or ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... want to be warm, thank you, a day like this," she retorted, pushing back the cape. For, though it was no longer spring, Flossie's dream tugged at her heartstrings. There was a dull anger against him in her heart. At that moment Flossie could have fought savagely ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Hecate. Phoebus (who, as I have told you, was an exquisite poet) forthwith began to make an ode about the poor mother's grief; and, if we were to judge of his sensibility by this beautiful production, he must have been endowed with a very tender heart. But when a poet gets into the habit of using his heartstrings to make chords for his lyre, he may thrum upon them as much as he will, without any great pain to himself. Accordingly, though Phoebus sang a very sad song, he was as merry all the while as were the ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dominions. While this was under discussion in the Upper House, Nelson, impressed with the idea that war must come, left his seat, and wrote to the Prime Minister the following line: "Whenever it is necessary, I am your Admiral." Yet he felt the tug at his heartstrings as he never had before. "War or Peace?" he writes to his old flag-captain, Berry. "Every person has a different opinion. I fear perhaps the former, as I hope so much the latter." Only with large reservations would he now have repeated the rule Codrington tells ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... recollections till the agony brings tears to the waking eyes. And so it was with Anthony; often the scalding tears, like pearly drops, would fall from his eyes to the coverlet and roll on the floor with a sound as if one of his heartstrings had broken. Sometimes, with a lurid flame, memory would light up a picture of life which had never faded from his heart. If he dried his eyes with his nightcap, then the tear and the picture would be crushed; but the source of the tears remained and welled up again in his heart. The pictures ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... saw that, I felt a sort of throttling fright, as though one had caught hold of my heartstrings; and so many and such strange thoughts rose in me, that the blood went pounding round and round in my head, as it did once afterwards when I was fighting with the sea and near drowned. Surely to have ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... in at the window on the fragrant morning sunbeams, in a voice of the most penetrating tenderness I had ever felt break against my heartstrings. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... harder all the time," said Leslie miserably. "I've nothing to look forward to. Morning will come after morning—and he will not come back—he will never come back. Oh, when I think that I will never see him again I feel as if a great brutal hand had twisted itself among my heartstrings, and was wrenching them. Once, long ago, I dreamed of love—and I thought it must be beautiful—and NOW—its like THIS. When he went away yesterday morning he was so cold and indifferent. He said ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... activity which has been pictured. Even this is not always to be done. Jesus left the most wonderful story He ever told with no words of application, for they were unnecessary. He knew that every prodigal would feel a tug at the heartstrings and an impulse to go home. At the conclusion of the story of the Good Samaritan He merely said, "Go thou and do likewise." Allowing the children to suggest what they would like to do if they so desire, or making the suggestion indirectly by song, or prayer, or the teacher's ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... couldn't stay away any longer. All the way up the trail I had a feeling that you had hold of my heartstrings pulling me to you, and as if they would break if I didn't get to you faster. I can't describe it exactly, but it was as real ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... market-penny, while her husband was hardly allowed any pocket-money at all. They were, however, very comfortably off, and had no children; but it really pained Mme. Oreille to see any money spent; it was like tearing at her heartstrings when she had to take any of those nice crown-pieces out of her pocket; and whenever she had to spend anything, no matter how necessary it was, she slept badly ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... party! A man would rather commit a crime than vote against his party. The evil runs through the country from East to West, from North to South, eating at the nation's heartstrings, gnawing at her sinews, and undermining her strength. The time is coming, is even now come, when two or three parties no longer suffice to express the disunion of the Union. There are three to-day: ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... sitting-room. I felt her soft white fingers upon my pulse and forehead. Again I saw her leaning down from the saddle of her great brown horse, and heard her voice, slow, emotionless, yet always with its strange power to play upon my heartstrings. And yet, while the grey seas of despair were closing over my head, I sat there with a stereotyped smile upon my lips, fingering carelessly the stem of my wineglass, unwilling guest of an unwilling host. I do not ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sweet and pure in the face that smiled welcome to him as he came noisily through the snow-crust; and something, too, in the colonel's face, which reached out and gripped at his very heartstrings, and filled him with a warm glow that was new and strange to him, and which was almost the happiness of these two. It swept from him the sense of loneliness which had oppressed him a short time before, and when at last, after ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... Conversations only, he would not have become through nineteen centuries the best beloved of Latin poets: beloved in his own time alike by the weary Atlas Augustus and the refined sensualist Maecenas; "playing round the heartstrings" of the stern censor Persius; endowed by Petronius and Quintilian with the prize of incommunicable felicity; the darling of Dante, Montaigne, Voltaire, Chesterfield; the "old popular Horace" of Tennyson; the Horace ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... attention for a moment. But I attended. It was necessary. And I eat toast and drank tea. That was necessary too; with every mouthful a stab of pain, and every little ordinary incident of the tea-table a wrenching of my heartstrings. One does those things quietly and the world never knows. But I hailed it as a great relief when Mrs. Sandford rose from ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... younger, some class of life for his petted little lady? Jamie had half-thoughts of training some nice lad to be fit for her,—Jamie earned money amply; of training him, too, to take his place and earn his salary. Every discontented look in Mercedes' lovely face went to Jamie's heartstrings. ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... now bestirring themselves—it is high time—but criticism has not died. Refined natures have heartstrings like the chords of Aeolian harps, sensitive to the faintest touch, responsive to the gentlest whisper of the evening breeze; such shrink in terror from the icy breath of the scoffer: the purpose is frozen dead within their ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face did not show it. They were putting him in the balance against Heart's Desire, but his speech offered no evidence of it. They were making Constance Ellsworth the price of Heart's Desire, but Dan Anderson did not divulge it, as he sat ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... score of his extreme youth, for, as they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them together as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and tying all the knots in which there are heartstrings concerned, as ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... that stood firm at Waterloo wavering before the blaze of Southern rifles. If I have read of the hardy Northern volunteers on the battle-plains of Mexico; I remember the Palmetto boys at Cherubusco, and the brave Mississippians at Buena Vista. Is it a wonder, then, that my heartstrings ache when I see the links breaking that bind me to such memories? If I would have the Government parley awhile for the sake of peace, even although the strict law sanction the bayonet and cannon, I do it ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... so quietly in the sun. "After the trail the rest is good, and yet I will be eager long before the year has passed to follow Maren,—may Mary give her grace!—into that wilderness which so draws at her heartstrings." ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... head fell upon his breast. He closed his eyes, for not even his friend should see that they were wet with tears. But even whilst the heartstrings were torn by the ruthless hand of passion, it seemed as if—when the man had finished speaking—the magic words had already left upon the soul their impress ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... me, Arnold," she said softly. "After all, Isobel is but a child. What cunning tune can she have played upon your heartstrings that you should espouse her cause with so much fervour? If she were a few years older one could ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with prophetic Lips hot with the bloodbeats of song, With tremor of heartstrings magnetic, With thoughts as thunders in throng, With consonant ardours of chords That pierce men's souls as with swords And hale them hearing ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... hickory logs, a cheerful sight, were it not for that odious motto, "Non Possumus," graven over the mantel-shelf where it must inevitably meet every eye. Never could I read it without a tightening at my heartstrings; a potency of blighting evil seemed to lie in the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... childish brow. She wanted suddenly to gather the little body into her warm arms, against her kind breast. Her emotion, she realized, was far from professional; Frank Wiley IV had somehow laid a finger on her heartstrings. ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... stranger with exceptional powers of intervention and comment, and an air of being disappointed about his offspring. It was shocking to lose him; it was like an unexpected hole in the universe, and the writing of "Death" upon the sky, but it did not tear Mr. Polly's heartstrings at first so much as rouse him to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... "fun." He didn't overflow with shillings, yet so far as roving was concerned the practice was always easy, and perhaps the adorably whimsical lyric, contained in his second volume of verse, on the pull of Grantchester at his heartstrings, as the old vicarage of that sweet adjunct to Cambridge could present itself to him in a Berlin cafe, may best exemplify the sort of thing that was represented, in one way and another, by his taking his most ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... and then when she went abroad, but was all too afraid in her sweet presence to speak to her, until at last, beside the banks of Rother, he had spoken of his love, and she had whispered that which had made his heartstrings quiver for joy. Then they broke a sixpence between them, and vowed to be true ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... us with his piteous eyes to save him; then spoke, and said he had a wife and little children at home. Think how it wrung our heartstrings. But what could we do? The Burgundian was within his right. We could only beg and plead for the prisoner. Which we did. And the Burgundian enjoyed it. He stayed his hand to hear more of it, and laugh at it. That stung. Then the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... mantle of forgiveness; And from every wound that severs Parent stems and sturdy branches, Springs a shoot of vital growing, Flows a blessed balm of healing. Thus may North and South uniting, Soothe the pangs of heartstrings broken, Leave the fierce and naming fires, In the crucible to smoulder. Let the ashes crumble, crumble, To the dust of buried vengeance. Let no moon wax o'er Lancaster, But may shed her beams in gladness; Let no moon wane o'er the city, But illumes ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... morning—at dinner time—at supper—Rebecca Mary absented herself from the house. Aunt Olivia set on the meals regularly and waited with tightening heartstrings. It did not seem to occur to her to eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of all the dainties she got together wistfully. At nightfall the second day she began to feel real alarm. She put on her bonnet and went to the minister's. He was rather a new minister, and the Plummers had ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... "She was under forty, tall and stately in person, and habited in deep black. She looked the widow of a hero; as one worthy of those Grecian mothers who gave their hair for bow-strings and their girdles for sword-belts, and, while their heartstrings were cracking, sent their husbands to fight and perish for their country. Perhaps it was she who led Marco Bozzaris from the wild guerilla warfare in which he had passed his early life, and fired him with the high and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the man whom my mother feared, and was it right that I should leave him thus that I might go maying with my dear? I knew in my breast that it was not right, but I was so set upon my desire and so strongly did my heartstrings pull me towards her whose white robe now fluttered on the slope of the Park Hill, that I ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... that as each succeeding mile travelled by the stage took her further and further away from him, something which, as yet, she did not dare to name, kept tugging at her heartstrings and which she endeavoured to overcome by listening to the stage driver's long-winded reminiscences and anecdotes concerning the country through which they were passing. But, although she made a brave effort to appear interested, ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... doubt. That has been our weak point—lack of a ballad singer. Know any ballads?—Not fancy ones. Nothing fancy! We cater to the plain people, and the plain people only like the best—that is, the simplest—the things that reach for the heartstrings with ten strong fingers. You don't happen to know 'I Stood ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... 'Tis true, your asses and your apes, And other brutes in human shapes, And that thing made of sound and show, Which mortals have misnamed a beau, (But in the language of the sky Is call'd a two-legg'd butterfly), Will make your very heartstrings ache With loud and everlasting clack, 30 And beat your auditory drum, Till you grow deaf, or they grow dumb. But to our story we return: 'Twas early on a Summer morn, A Wolf forsook the mountain den, And issued ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Ducal heartstrings touches: Allow me to present your new Grand Duchess. Should she offend, you'll graciously excuse her— And kindly recollect ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... letter last quoted, "Flens mihi meam famam commendasti." "Believe," he says, "that I cling to the doctrines which you yourself have taught me. They are fixed in my very heartstrings." ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the better part," he said. "Yet Borrowdean is one of those men who know very well how to play upon the heartstrings. A human being is like a musical instrument to him. He knows how to find out the harmonies or strike ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Clang! clang! In two minutes comes the horn, and then we are off. The gipsies are playing the saddest of sad songs, it seems as if one's heartstrings were being ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... game; and the terror of war gripped one's heartstrings that night. The momentary flash of the exploding shells lighted up the faces of the men with ghastly vividness, some grinding out curses then groping blindly on. I was glad when the journey was ended, and I turned into a dug-out ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... cool walks, with sunshine or shade, as may be desired, and things on every side to interest. For, unfortunately, the man with a sore chest has a brain and a spinal cord to be stimulated and fed, not to speak of those little heartstrings undiscovered by the anatomist, and which yet tug and pull ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... minutes the unequal fight continued. It could not last much longer. Despair pulled at the German's heartstrings as he saw his observer topple for a moment in his seat, then pitch forward into space. The biplane tipped dangerously, righted itself and sped like a homing pigeon in the direction of the German lines. There was nothing left but to fly for it. The German dared not look behind; only ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... am come in his place, as he is detained by company. He bade me deliver a message to you alone and then hasten back." With this the girl almost whispered in the ear of the old soldier a few words that caused his teeth to clench and his heartstrings to tighten. She had hardly concluded, when an approaching step from the direction of the fort caused her to spring aside and fly with ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... him. Besides, though Cassy had laughed, there had been a tugging at her heartstrings. Shabby, unkempt, in a frayed dressing-gown, his arm in a dismal sling, he looked so out of it, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... touched his very heartstrings, but he was too deeply moved to answer her for a moment. The renewal of this thought exalted his very soul. All that was noble and great in his nature seemed rising up in one ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... poems the form of personal address; and countless students and scholars and men out of school and immersed in the cares of life to carry Horace with them in leisure hours. Circum praecordia ludit, "he plays about the heartstrings," said Persius, long before any of these, when the actual Horace was still fresh ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... that vivid situation of the shy, departing suitor when Karin Ingmarsson suddenly breaks through convention and publicly over the coffee cups declares herself betrothed. The book is a succession of these brilliantly portrayed situations that clutch at the heartstrings—the meetings in the mission house, the reconciliation scene when Ingmar's battered watch is handed to the man he felt on his deathbed he had wronged, the dance on the night of the "wild hunt," the shipwreck, Gertrude's renunciation of ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... she could sit no longer; her very heartstrings were wrung, and she might not rise up in defence of herself. Defence? Did she not deserve more, ten thousand times more reproach than had met her ears now? This girl did not say of her half ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... complacent optimism, acquiescing in all human experiences as special essentials of the infinite plan, shrinks from such crucial test. This is surely a noted exception. A daughter's tender heartstrings are too sensitive ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... in Julia's home, and it had so wound itself around May's heartstrings that she could not be enticed away; but there was never anybody who could supplant Will in my heart; so I gladly ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... sent for a cab and had her conveyed as quickly as possible to the home for the homeless. Then turning to Luzerne, she said bitterly, "Mr. Luzerne, will you explain your encounter with that unfortunate woman?" She spoke as calmly as she could, for a fierce and bitter anguish was biting at her heartstrings. "What claim ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... spirit in days of old had visited this world of death and change. Perhaps he had then been a mighty skald, skilful in playing on heartstrings. But for some evil deed he had been condemned to begin again his earthly life, to live by the work of his hands, without the knowledge of the strength of his spirit. But now his grief had broken his spirit's chains. His soul was ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... Just going to write. Lionel's song. Lovely name you have. Can't write. Accept my little pres. Play on her heartstrings pursestrings too. She's a. I called you naughty boy. Still the name: Martha. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... dresses glimmer smaller and smaller down the sidewalk as they went away. I have had no other success that pulled at my heartstrings ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... of triumph,[1] Which proclaimed us proud and free— While breaking away the heartstrings Of our nation's harmony. Sadly it floateth from us, Sighing o'er land and wave; Till, mute on the lips of the poet, It sleeps in his Southern grave. Spirit and song departed! Minstrel and minstrelsy! We mourn ye, heavy hearted,— But we ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... sleeves rolled up for hard duty was another. The troopers cared little for sermonising, but they honoured service. Then, it was Jamieson for whom the evangelist was caring. And Jamieson held the very heartstrings of the garrison. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... another baby there now—a jolly, roystering little fellow, just one year old to-day, on his mother's birthday, and a very precious little man he is; but the dear little girl who just alighted in their arms long enough to lay hold upon their heartstrings and then flew away with the other ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Since she had ceased to be his mother-confessor he had become very shadowy; his image now rose substantial from the newspaper lines, and she was surprised to find in herself a little palpitation at his probable perils. "One's heartstrings, too, are pulled," she thought. "I don't like it. Marionettes should move, not feel." These reflections, however, came to her more often anent her family, and the struggles of her kin for a livelihood touched her more deeply ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... solution was that setting her aside when he had to, served so to cut in two his life, so wrenched at his heartstrings, so burnt and bruised his spirit, that when, in his active fashion he had lived some of the hurt down, he could not bring himself easily to reopen the old subject—fresh wounds for him might still lurk in it—how could he tell? Although it had been at the call, the insistence ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... a spirit doth dwell Whose heartstrings are a lute. None sing so wildly well As the angel, Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... remembered how far the worldly interests and domestic sympathies of the Italians were engaged in the maintenance of their Church system. The fibers of the Church were intertwined with the very heartstrings of the people. Few families could not show one or more members who had chosen the clerical career, and who looked to Rome for patronage, employment, and perhaps advancement to the highest honors. The whole nation felt a pride ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds |
